The goal here is that I might write a book covering texture creation for use in Blender and UnrealED for UT3. To do so I want to use free software alternatives to the pricey, and not very legally accessible, industry standard tools. For the book I'm wrapping up I cover basic mapping and modeling using Blender and UnrealED. But it has come to my attention that sme texturing may be necessary. But I have a problem...
I love Photoshop. It is what I'm used to, what took me years to learn, and until I found Paint.Net (excellent work from what I have seen so far) I had no viable alternative. I hate Gimp! I loathe it! Although I also found, about the same time I found PDN, Gimpshop which I have yet to try. I'm not mentioning any of this to start some my program is better than yours war. I'm providing some background for what I want to ask.
1. Are there any Layer Blending plugins available, or some alternative means to accomplishing them, for PDN? That is, can I do this Brick Texture tutorial (you will need a free Fileplanet account to download I think):
http://nucleus.planetunreal.gamespy.com ... p?cat_id=2
In PDN with relative ease?
2. Can I dock windows together (love the transparency BTW)?
3. This is a tutorial request... How would I go about making a light texture, as seen in the pictures here, in PDN:
http://nucleus.planetunreal.gamespy.com ... photo_id=1
That is, a simple image that has a lens or bulb mounted na metal plate, which when applied to a mesh could be used as a light source. A tutorial covering this will kill two birds with one stone. I could learn the vagaries of PDN, and get a method together for creating light textures for one of the levels in the book I'm writing.
4. This is a request for a plugin which can take any full color image and turn it into a Normal Map
I appreciate any help, and thank you for the excellent program!
- Deathbliss